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Musical Hasbarah, The New In Thing

It seems that musical hasbarah — Israel advocacy — is the new in thing, after the flotilla “We Con The World,” an angry — and some say offensive — caricature of the flotilla activists, went viral on YouTube. It’s still online here and has received more than 2 million hits.

Now, a composition student at the Jerusalem’s Rubin Academy of Music and Dance, 22-year-old Yedida Freilich, has decided to appeal to people’s musical senses over their penchant for parody. Her song “Only Israel” has received more than 380,000 hits, and has just gone on sale at iTunes. It decries what Freilich sees as double standards that are applied to Israel in international opinion.

“Unless you’re Israeli, self-defense is a right,” she sings. Freilich is a settler — she lives in the West Bank town of Neve Daniel, and there’s a bit of settler ideology in the song, with a reference to the pullout of “Katif” (i.e. the Katif bloc of settlements in Gaza) and a line on Arab countries “demanding from us to surrender our soil.”